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World Economic Forum ranks India at 62nd place on Inclusive Development Index

Norway remains the world’s most inclusive advanced economy, while Lithuania again tops the list of emerging economies, the World Economic Forum said.

The index takes into account the living standards, environmental sustainability and protection of future generations from further indebtedness. (HT File)

India was today ranked at the 62nd place among emerging
economies on an Inclusive Development Index, much below China’s 26th position
and Pakistan’s 47th.

Norway remains the world’s
most inclusive advanced economy, while Lithuania again tops the list of
emerging economies, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said while releasing the
yearly index before the start of its annual meeting, to be attended by several
world leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald
Trump.

The index takes into account
the “living standards, environmental sustainability and protection of future
generations from further indebtedness”, the WEF said. It urged the leaders to
urgently move to a new model of inclusive growth and development, saying
reliance on GDP as a measure of economic achievement is fuelling short-termism
and inequality.

India was ranked 60th among
79 developing economies last year, as against China’s 15th and Pakistan’s 52nd
position.

The 2018 index, which
measures progress of 103 economies on three individual pillars -- growth and
development; inclusion; and inter-generational equity -- has been divided into
two parts. The first part covers 29 advanced economies and the second 74
emerging economies.

The index has also classified
the countries into five sub-categories in terms of the five-year trend of their
overall Inclusive Development Growth score -- receding, slowly receding,
stable, slowly advancing and advancing.

Despite its low overall
score, India is among the ten emerging economies with ‘advancing’ trend. Only
two advanced economies have shown ‘advancing’ trend.

Among advanced economies,
Norway is followed by Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Denmark in the top
five.

Small European economies
dominate the top of the index, with Australia (9) the only non-European economy
in the top 10. Of the G7 economies, Germany (12) ranks the highest. It is
followed by Canada (17), France (18), the UK (21), the US (23), Japan (24) and
Italy (27).

The top-five most inclusive
emerging economies are Lithuania, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Latvia and Poland.

Performance is mixed among
BRICS economies, with the Russian Federation ranking 19th, followed by China
(26), Brazil (37), India (62) and South Africa (69).

Of the three pillars that
make up the index, India ranks 72nd for inclusion, 66th for growth and
development and 44th for inter-generational equity.

Although China ranks first
among emerging economies in GDP per capita growth (6.8 per cent) and labour
productivity growth (6.7 per cent) since 2012, its overall score is brought
down by lacklustre performance on inclusion, the WEF said.

It found that decades of
prioritising economic growth over social equity has led to historically high
levels of wealth and income inequality and caused governments to miss out on a
virtuous circle in which growth is strengthened by being shared more widely and
generated without unduly straining the environment or burdening future generations.

Excessive reliance by
economists and policy-makers on Gross Domestic Product as the primary metric of
national economic performance is part of the problem, the WEF said.

The GDP measures current
production of goods and services rather than the extent to which it contributes
to broad socio-economic progress as manifested in median household income,
employment opportunity, economic security and quality of life, it added.

The WEF also said that rich
and poor countries alike are struggling to protect future generations, as it
cautioned political and business leaders against expecting higher growth to be
a panacea for the social frustrations, including those of younger generations
who have shaken the politics of many countries in recent years.

SAINT PETERSBURG: A
homemade bomb blast at a supermarket in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg injured 10 people Wednesday, officials said, sparking a
probe into attempted murder.

"According to preliminary information, an explosion of
an unidentified object occurred in a store," a spokeswoman for Russia's Investigative
Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, said in a statement.

The blast was caused by a "homemade explosive device
with the power equivalent to 200 grammes of TNT filled with lethal
fragments," she said.

"The investigation is looking at all possible causes of
what happened," she said, adding that a probe for attempted murder had
been launched.

The incident comes several months after Russia's second city
was rocked with a metro bombing in April which killed 16 people and amid
concern that hundreds of Russian citizens who travelled to fight alongside
jihadists groups abroad could pose a mounting security challenge back home.

Rattled by a one-two
punch of betrayal and scandal, Donald Trump on Thursday tried to block the
publication of a bare-knuckle book that portrays his White House as a fetid
stew of backbiting, incompetence and dysfunction. The publishers
responded by moving the release date up by four days to Friday. Trump instructed his
lawyers to prevent the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside
the Trump White House” -- an expose by author and political muckraker Michael
Wolff -- which quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt
about his fitness for office. The book -- which
paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth -- quotes at length
his former ally and chief strategist Steve Bannon, who also received a “cease and
desist” order from Trump’s attorneys. “Your publication of
the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other
claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion
of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, an…